Embodiments of the present invention relate to a device and a method for obtaining information about one or more living beings. Further embodiments relate to a method and a device for selectively exciting, detecting and monitoring animal populations such as insects, for example, as well as for determining specific states of development and behavior.
One area where detection and/or monitoring of animal populations are useful is pest monitoring and pest control.
More than 10% of global grain harvest is destroyed by animal pests. Said losses amount to about 200 million tons of foodstuff and animal food per year worldwide. The resulting economic damage amounts to about 20 billion euros per year worldwide. In Germany alone, about 40 million tons of grain are stored each year. The food regulation stipulates that mills and food processing companies do not accept and/or process any products containing animal pests. For example, the most dangerous storage pest in Europe is the granary weevil.
There are various methods of recognizing animal pests in bulk material such as grain, for example. In a known method, sensitive stem microphones are inserted into the bulk material, and in the event of pest infestation, corresponding acoustic signals such as nibbling sounds, for example, are received. The nibbling sounds caused by the insects, in particular by the insect larvae, may be recognized and evaluated in a manual or (semi-) automated manner.
However, by means of the known methods of recognizing animal pests, the pests in their various stages of development can only be detected when they cause or emit noises at the time of measurement. However, the pest's activities are highly dependent on the ambient temperature. For example, recognition of the pests is not or hardly possible in the event of a reduced temperature.
In addition, it has to be taken into account that different pests cause different noises. By means of the known methods of recognizing animal pests, said noises virtually cannot be differentiated, i.e., the type of pests cannot be determined by means of the known methods.
In addition, it has to be taken into account that pests typically live through several stages of development (e.g., the granary weevil lives through four stages of development) and accordingly emit noises that differ in amplitude and frequency as a function of the stage of development. By means of the known methods of recognizing animal pests, said noises virtually cannot be differentiated into different stages of development.
Moreover, by using current methods it is not possible to recognize an extent of an infestation with pests and to determine a location of a beginning infestation with pests, e.g., in a silo.
In summary, it is therefore not possible, by means of the known methods of recognizing animal pests, to early initiate and perform, in a targeted manner, pest control that is adapted in a manner defined by the type of pest, the stage of development, the extent of infestation and the location of settlement, and that is adequate in terms of effort and cost, by permanently monitoring stocks.
A further area where detection and/or monitoring of animal populations are useful is monitoring of working animals, such as monitoring of bees in bee-keeping.
The direct benefit supplied by honey bees kept by bee-keepers consists in the production of honey, wax, propolis and pollen. Worldwide production of honey amounts to about 1.5 million tons per year. About 80 million bee colonies are kept by bee-keepers worldwide. The indirect benefit of honey bees consists in the transfer of the pollen by the activity of collecting nectar and pollen and is many times higher than their direct services that they render by producing honey. The economic benefit of pollination per year is estimated to exceed 100 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. The internationally largest honey producers who have the largest numbers of bee colonies are (in the order given) China, U.S., Argentina, Mexico, Canada and Brazil. In Germany, about one quarter of the annual German consumption of honey is produced by about 100,000 bee-keepers possessing about one million bee colonies. The remainder is imported. Large honey farms in Europe often keep 300 or more bee colonies, in the US they often keep 1,000 or more bee colonies.
For bee-keepers, monitoring the bee colonies and keeping them in a manner that takes animal welfare into account constitutes an enormous amount of effort which becomes more difficult or even impossible to manage as the number of bee colonies increases. Bee-keeping is made substantially more difficult by parasites such as the Varroa mite, by highly infectious diseases such as the American foul brood and by the heavy use of pesticides in agriculture. Therefore, bee-keepers obtain information about any of their colonies, ideally at any time, with regard to specific states such as the mental state, the swarming behavior, losses of bees, diseases, behavioral disorders, etc.
No methods of monitoring working animals are known which enable effective (semi-) automated monitoring of bee colonies. Therefore, bee-keepers who migrate with their bee colonies, i.e., who take their bee colonies to and install them wherever plants are blossoming and a good yield can be found, have to be on site in order to monitor and manage the bee colonies, which represents a significant amount of effort.